


Cold Medicine and Cheesy Movies

by ewatsonia



Category: Asagao Academy: Normal Boots Club
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 01:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewatsonia/pseuds/ewatsonia
Summary: Hana comes to check up on Ian while he's sick, and it doesn't entirely go how she expected.





	Cold Medicine and Cheesy Movies

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I posted but I hope some wholesome brotp stuff is enough to make up for it.

Having been the one who’d caught the bug first and unleashed it on her friend group, Hana felt a certain obligation to lend a hand to the ones who had gotten the brunt of the cold. For the most part, this just amounted to Hana bringing by some soup and tissues since, mercifully, nobody had quite gotten as sick as she had. Mai had been out for a day and if anything, was grateful for the excuse to skip classes and watch cartoons all day. Paul had even managed to power through it and go to class anyway.

And then there was Ian. He’d been missing from class for two days now and didn’t seem the type to milk an illness, so Hana could only imagine he was currently dealing with the same symptoms that had put her down for the count for most of last week.

This is what brought her in front of the door to his and Luke’s room, the latter of whom had kindly left it unlocked for her so Ian wouldn’t have to crawl out of bed to let her in. Knowing she could just walk in aside, Hana still made it a point to actually knock.

Following the knock, there was a faint groan and the sound of blankets shifting. Hana decided to go right ahead in before Ian tried to get out of bed to open the door anyway.

Making her way inside, Hana smiled softly at bundle of blankets on the bottom bunk. “Hey.”

The bundle shifted until a head with a mop of messy hair poked out. Ian returned her greeting with a strained smile of his own, before plopping his head back down onto the pillow like holding it up was too much effort. His nose was irritated and red, eyes droopy with dark circles beneath them, and it all stood out plainly with how pale he was.  “What’re you doing here?”

“I thought I’d check up on you, I hear _someone_ gave you a pretty nasty cold.” she replied, with a hint of a smirk.

Ian got about halfway through a chuckle before a sneeze interrupted it. And another. He continued to sneeze  another handful of times before gripping his forehead and groaning, breathing heavy.

Hana winced.

Once he’d recovered enough to look at her again, she held out a styrofoam container from the cafeteria and a bottle of water.  “Peace offering?”

“I’ll take the water, not really feeling-” he sneezed again, and plucked a tissue from the box on the floor and rather aggressively blew his nose before continuing. “Not really feeling up to food right now. You can put it down somewhere.”

Hana nodded and followed suit, handing him the water bottle and setting the soup down on Ian’s desk. “Might want to power through it at some point. Mai had to force me to a couple times, but it did make me feel a little better.”

Ian sighed and uncapped the water, chugging half of it down. “No promises, but I’ll try my best. Thank you, though.”

Hana looked him up and down again. “That’s all I came by to do, I can leave you alone to get some rest if you want me to, you look tired.”

Ian’s eyes widened and he shook his head(not without cringing like the motion hurt his head). “Uh. No you don’t have to...I mean if you want to you can but...” He tucked his face into his arm and sneezed again, wiping his now watery eyes on his sleeve

“If you want the company I’m happy to stick around.” Hana assured him. She couldn’t help being a little surprised at that reaction considering Ian’s penchant for alone time, but who was she to question it or deprive him of a visitor if he wanted one?  

Ian visibly relaxed.

Hana snagged the rolling chair at Ian’s desk and pulled it over by his bed, seating herself. She eyed the tv across the room, and grinned at the idea that came to her. “How about movie night to distract you from your cold?”

“Sure. I got some VHS tapes we can pick from.” Ian shifted, trying to get up before Hana stuck an arm out, blocking him.

 _"You_ stay in bed. I’ll pick the tape” she replied, giving him a little push back into his bunk to accompany the suggestion

Ian rolled his eyes and continued to get up anyway, albeit slowly. “I’m not _that_ sick Hana. I’m capable of shoving a tape in the VCR.”

“This is more about your love of awful movies than about you being sick.”

"Wow."

Hana stuck her tongue out at him and went to examine the shelf that held a mix of Ian’s VHS tapes and his and Luke’s video games. After a a few moments of debate, she plucked one of the least offensive and tacky tapes from the shelf she could find, a Bisney Channel Original Movie she recognized.

“ _Stepbrother from Planet Bizarre._ At least you have some taste.”  Ian noted before launching into another sneezing fit and promptly curling himself back up into his blankets.

Hana turned the tv on and popped the tape into the player. “I haven’t seen this since I was a kid. I watched it at friend’s house a couple of times when I was little, before his mom banned us from watching it. I guess it gave him nightmares about his family secretly being aliens.”

Ian snorted. “Your friend sounds like PBG, he’s _terrified_ of aliens.”

Hana giggled at the thought as she sat back down. Was he _really?_

As the commercials at the beginning of the tape played, Ian’s eyes moved to his nightstand “Can you hand me that cold medicine? I don’t want to have to pause the movie every five seconds because I’m sneezing.”

Hana obliged, passing the bottle of blueish green liquid with the word **_SEVERE_ **prominently emblazoned on it. Ian smiled in thanks.

...and then proceeded to completely ignore the measurement cup on top and just chug a bunch of it.

Hana stared, wide eyed, in slight horror and almost went to snatch the bottle from him. “Ian,  _oh my god_ you’re only supposed to take a little bit of that at a time! That’s what the little cup is for!”

Ian scrunched up his face, though whether it was because of her remark or the taste of the medicine she had no idea. “I’m not gonna die because I took a little over the dosage Hana. I didn’t want to spill it all over me trying to pour it.”  

Unintentionally or not, he demonstrated this by holding out the bottle and letting her see how much it was shaking in his hand.

“At least don’t chug it like it’s soda next time.” Hana sighed, grabbing the bottle and putting it back in it’s spot. “I'm pretty sure that was more than a _little_ too much.”

“Fiiiine.” Ian drawled.

They finally got past all the cheesy commercials and trailers and the movie started playing. For a while, the pair sat in comfortable silence while they watched, breaking it occasionally with little comments here and there poking fun at the film. It was nice, Hana was filled with fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and almost forgot she’d come here in the first place because Ian was sick. She hoped that it was much the same for him.

Peering over, Hana discovered that at some point after the quips had stopped, Ian had dozed off. He laid under his blankets, eyes closed looking rather peaceful. She found herself unsure of whether to prod him awake or turn off the movie.

She found herself leaning away from either of those options, and decided upon just leaving the movie on and him alone. He could use the rest and maybe he benefited from the background noise. Hana herself didn't mind the quiet company of her sleeping friend either.

About two thirds through the movie, Ian stirred awake. He looked…not entirely there yet and there was a bit of a frantic energy behind his eyes. That'd be the side effects other than the drowsiness from the cold medicine finally kicking in she'd wager.

“Hana.” he spoke, in an indeterminate emotion, once he gathered himself more. He still didn't look all together despite the attempt though.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for...for not leaving.” he half mumbled, speech groggy.

Hana, confused, responded with a puzzled and slightly overblown smile. “You're…welcome? It's no big deal, I like hanging out with you.”

The corners of Ian’s lips turned up,  but they slipped back down moments later. “Sometimes I think…people don't.”

“What…Why do you say that?” Hana frowned. Was this still the cold medicine? She’d heard of people not realizing what they were saying on pain killers, but this was just some over the counter stuff. He hadn’t taken _that_ much had he? She picked up the bottle again, a lot of it was missing and Ian _was_ skinny as a rail…

Ian mumbled something again that Hana couldn’t for the life of her decipher. She put the medicine back down and scooted the rolling chair closer to him. “Ian?”

“I’m boring. They like doing things and I don’t.” He sat up a bit, his eyes still bleary and his blanket slid off of him, revealing him shivering a bit.

Hana could hazard a guess who ‘they’ were, her mind flickering to occasions she’d seen the rest Hidden Block engaging in shenanigans, Ian not partaking, but watching fondly. But...“That doesn’t mean you’re boring. Just because you’re a bit lower energy than the rest of them sometimes. I’ve seen you pretty animated too.” she tried to encourage him.

Ian shrugged. “S’hard to do that sometimes. What if they get tired of waiting for me to catch up?”

There was a space in between his question and Hana’s answer where she was internally screaming as she processed that Ian was spilling his closely guarded heart out to her.

“They won’t.”

“Wouldn’t be the…” he trailed off, then looked away and sneezed again, though only once and not as aggressively as before. At least the medicine was doing what it was supposed to in addition to…all this. He kept his head turned away, still shaking.

Hana leaned over and pulled his blanket up, gently wrapping it back around his shoulders.  Ian relaxed them a little as she did this, and looked back at her. His eyes were more watery than she’d expect from such a little sneeze.

“Do you…” he begun, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. Realizing her hands lingered and were interfering with that, Hana removed them and kept and attentive ear as he continued. “Do you know why Luke’s avoiding me then? If...if you’re so sure they won’t leave.”

“He’s avoiding you?” Hana raised her eyebrows and her mouth dropped open a little bit. That didn’t sound like Luke.

“Lately he’s only been around when he needs to grab things from the room. He doesn’t even stay the night. I think I did something wrong.” he confided. “Or he’s gotten bored of me being his roommate I guess.”

“What do you mean by lately?” she narrowed her eyes, a hunch forming in her mind behind them. “When did this start?”

Head still a fog, she was sure, it took Ian some time to produce an answer, “A few days ago.”

“You mean…when you first started coming down with this cold?” she asked, looking a mix of amused and relieved  as she confirmed her suspicions. “Ian I’m pretty sure he just doesn’t want to catch it from you and get sick. He should’ve _said_ that to you so you wouldn’t worry, but you know how oblivious Luke can be. I doubt he meant any harm.”

“But _you’re_ here.” he protested, looking all the world like he wanted to believe what she was saying but couldn’t.  

Oh how the tables had turned tonight, her being the rational one trying to quell _his_ anxiety. “Because I know I don’t need to worry about catching a cold I already had.”

The light bulb went on in Ian's head.

“I’m an idiot.” He concluded, bowing his head down, half muffling his words in his hands. He looked back to her, tears threatening to spill over, trembling.  “This is why people _leave._  I do stupid stuff like-”

Hana put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze, cutting him off. “No you’re not, your head’s just all funny right now because you took too much cold medicine. That stuff can have some...interesting side effects, that’s kind of why I was kind of horrified that you chugged it like you did.”

“I’ve always just drunk from the bottle though.” he said, and Hana flashed back to his excuse that he didn’t want to spill it as he inadvertently revealed that he was full of it when he said that.

Hana gently rubbed circles on his shoulder, hoping it might help relax him.“Maybe you should stop doing that. Is all this really worth putting off some sneezing?”

“No. I think I…” he ran his hand through his messy hair, smoothing it just the slightest. “I think I feel worse. I thought it was just the cold and the medicine not working. Guess I was wrong there. I’m an-”

Hana cut him off. “People make makes Ian. Stop calling yourself an idiot. That’s not going to make you feel any better. It’ll make it worse, actually.”

“You sound like you know from experience.” Ian said, near automatically. Hana supposed her voice just had a knowing tone in it, and in his current state Ian couldn’t help the curiosity.

That didn’t stop the uncomfortable shift when he asked that though. She pulled her hands back to herself, yet still she nodded. “I know this is just kind of a passing feeling for you but...Talking like that it...sinks in after a while. It’s why I don’t like self deprecating jokes that much.”

“That’s good to know. Since…it got _worse_ because of what I did today but it isn’t actually just a passing thing.” he admitted, voice very quiet, like he was afraid of her actually hearing it. But he smiled, and this time it stuck around. Hana returned it.  “Thanks kiddo. I’m glad you came around today.”

“Me too, I didn’t realize…” she let the sentence trail away and decided not to linger on the topic. Ian looked better, no need to plunge back into talking about his feelings again. Especially since…well with how little he talked about them, she couldn’t imagine him _entirely_ pleased about how much he’d already divulged.

“You know,” she begun again, suddenly having a _very_ good idea for how to shift the discussion. “It’s kind of funny, you calling me kiddo.”

“And why is that?” Ian crossed his arms, a bit of his usual body language reconquering its territory, the remainder of the shaking noticeably calming down.

“Well, I’m older than you.”

Ian’s eyes widened a little but he scoffed it off.  “By what, like a few months? That hardly counts.”

Hana grinned big, relishing in what she was about to correct him on. “By like, a _year_ Ian. I was held back for missing too much school. I’m closer in age to Jeff than to you.”

Seeing Ian’s jaw dropping, and his eyes practically popping out of his skull, Hana giggled herself into a fit. He kept staring. “I’m too sick to deal with revelations like this, my head already hurts. What the hell, Hana?”

“Something to preoccupy your mind?” she laughed again. “Are you really _that_ surprised?”

“ _Yes._ You _definitely_ come off younger.” he assured her. “But I guess thanks? Gonna be wrapping my head around t _hat_ instead of worrying about ridiculous stuff I guess.”

“Mission accomplished then.” Hana said firmly. “Now that that’s out of the way…should we rewind the movie?”

Ian turned, and saw that without either of them realizing it until then, the movie had been carrying on without them paying attention  and now the credits were rolling. They’d completely tuned out the ridiculous background noise that accompanied their heartfelt conversation.  “Oh. Nah, I forget what I last saw since I dozed off and I don’t think it’s worth the effort trying to figure it out, honestly. Maybe we can watch something else?”

“That’s fine!”

“Cool, and I get to pick the movie this time.”

It wasn’t a question, and Hana just _knew_ he was going to take advantage of that choice to pick something ridiculous but she nodded without question. It was harmless and...well it didn’t seem right judging what he wanted to watch after all that.

There were worse things out there than cheesy movies.


End file.
